The Situation

A premium DTC skincare brand selling $60–$120 serums and moisturizers was spending $42K/month on Google Ads. The in-platform ROAS showed 4.2x — but Shopify told a completely different story. PMax was cannibalizing branded search, claiming credit for sales that would have happened organically. DPA on Meta was retargeting the same audience as prospecting with no purchaser exclusions. The actual Shopify-attributed ROAS from Google Paid was under 1.0x. Twelve campaigns were running with overlapping audiences and no clear roles. The irony: the brand had strong organic traffic from their founder's Instagram (180K followers), which meant PMax was likely claiming conversions that would have happened organically anyway.

What We Did

We started with measurement — without knowing which sales were incremental, optimizing was guesswork. On Google, we killed the PMax that was inflating ROAS by claiming branded conversions, and rebuilt the account around 5 campaigns: Brand Search (exact match, tROAS), Brand Shopping (medium priority, targeting converters), Non-Brand Search (phrase match with tCPA), Non-Brand Shopping (high priority for prospecting), and a tightly controlled PMax with new customer acquisition goals and a $50/day hard cap. We also fixed the Merchant Center feed where 60% of products were disapproved, unlocking Shopping for the first time. On Meta, we restructured from a single campaign into a proper funnel: a Prospecting CBO for cold audiences with purchaser exclusions, an ASC (Advantage Shopping Campaign) to let Meta's algorithm optimize across placements, a Testing CBO for new creative concepts at controlled budgets, and a DPA Retargeting campaign restricted to site visitors and cart abandoners only. We added 90-day purchaser exclusions across all prospecting campaigns and built a creative pipeline — the account had been running the same 4 ads for 5 months.

The in-platform ROAS showed 4.2x. Shopify showed 0.99x. PMax was claiming branded sales it didn't generate. Once we fixed measurement, we could see exactly where to cut — and the honest ROAS doubled to 2.0x.

— Madhukar S.V., ScaleMarketer

Madhukar was the first person who showed us the gap between what our dashboard said and what our bank account said. That one insight changed how we think about every marketing dollar.

— Marketing Lead, D2C Skincare Brand (name withheld)

Google Ads — Before & After

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The Revenue Proof — Straight From Shopify

Meta Ads — Already Decent, Made Accountable

Unlike Google, Meta was actually the brand's stronger channel — the products photograph beautifully and their founder had a genuine skincare story that resonated. The account wasn't broken, just sloppy. One broad campaign with 4 stale creatives and no purchaser exclusions meant they were paying to retarget their own customers as if they were new prospects. We added 90-day purchaser exclusions to prospecting (immediately cutting wasted impressions), split into 4 campaigns with clear roles, and built a creative testing pipeline. The biggest unlock wasn't structural — it was creative. Lifestyle "shelfie" imagery featuring the products in real bathroom settings outperformed studio product shots by 2.5:1. We also found that their founder story ads (talking about why she created the line) drove the highest LTV customers, even though CPA was 20% higher than other creatives. Sometimes the cheapest acquisition isn't the most valuable one.

Meta Ads — Before & After